Disney's popular “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride has a scene in which "wenches" are auctioned off as brides to pirates. Or at least it does until next year, when the ride will be given a healthy dose of political correctness. In 2018, women won't be auctioned off; instead, riders will see plundered goods going up on the auction block.

The New York Daily News has the details of the transformation of this portion of the ride:

In the original scene, a redhead woman is an auction prize. But in the new scene, she gets to hold a gun and be a pirate.

“Our team thought long and hard about how best to update this scene,” Kathy Mangum, a senior vice president with Disney Imagineering, said in a news release. “Given the redhead has long been a fan favorite, we wanted to keep her as a pivotal part of the story, so we made her a plundering pirate!”

Wait, a gun? Are they going to have to redo this entire thing to get rid of that anti-PC relic too? Not everyone was happy about this bow to the gods of political correctness. “What a terrible idea. That scene is THE iconic scene of the entire attraction. And you’re going to change it because..?” one Disney fan wrote. “I grew up going to WDW and now take my family there. Never once have any of us thought that selling brides was a good thing. Never once did we think that Disney was encouraging that type of behavior. What a terrible TERRIBLE idea.”

Over at PJ Media, Faith Moore was a bit snarky about the change:

This will no doubt be seen as an important step forward in repairing relations between pirates and nonfictional people. Of course, as with any strides forward in the inclusion of members of an historically maligned subset of genre fiction, there is still much to be done. And the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is an excellent place to start, given its accepted status as an accurate and well-researched depiction of pirate culture.

Image Credit: gwaar on Flickr